Hosting Industry Demystified

Background color and tiles have forever changed the Web. A site without a history is considered old-fashioned and behind the times. It puts a burden on the designer to be a color coordinator.

If you change the background color, you also need to be able to modify the colors used to display text. Having the background color match the text color makes the text invisible.

Knowing the text properties of the current document, you can use these values to set the text properties for any new documents. Carry out the new documents the same as the current one, or create a new color by manipulating the current property values.

Another use is to provide feedback that the user's action was recognized. You can either replace the existing background or possibly flash the background. You can also use it with a countdown sequence like ticks of a clock.

There are five text properties available from the browser. These all reflect the values of the TEXT attribute of the BODY tag. The first two are the color for the background and the text of the document. Their properties are called bgColor and fgColor.

And the three other text properties reflect the three different colors applied to hyperlink text. Usually, you want your hyperlinks to stand out from the rest of the text.

Although new browsers displayed these links by underlining the text, now, most browsers distinguish these links by color. They also provide feedback to the user by changing this color momentarily when the user clicks the link. After a link is visited, the color also changes. Respectively, these properties are called linkColor, alinkColor, and vlinkColor.

Before JavaScript, all color values were specified using the RGB hexadecimal values. It is a six-digit number. It is often called a triplet as divided into three sets of two digits each; the first two digits specify the amount of red, the second two the amount of green, and the last two the amount of blue.

You create new documents using the document.write or document.writeln methods. As part of the string used in a document.write method, and you can use the font methods instead of hard coding in the style tags.

It can be easier to debug using document.write (promptstring.bold()) than document.write ("" + promptstring + ""). It also allows for the browser to handle implementation of HTML tags, for which specifications may change in the future.

There is also the case in which the new HTML code is never directly displayed by the browser. Instead, using the various user inputs, the HTML code is stored in either a text box or in a hidden value. When complete, the resulting code submitted to the server, which processes it.

And the Web-based message board is the practical example of it. Users can compose messages using a JavaScript-enhanced message editor. Because the messages become part of a Web page, they contain various physical styles, such as bold and italics. Buttons can be part of the form, so users do not necessarily need to know the HTML code to add italics or bold to their messages. When a message is complete, it can be sent to the server and appended to an existing page.